So today I went on an odyssey of rediscovery.\u00a0 I ventured out of the compound to get the oil changed on the older car.\u00a0 I had a free oil change pass that I earned when the service station botched some expensive repairs and felt that I should be assuaged to a small degree.\u00a0 So, I drove out, full of excitement, as I headed into the big city, well the, slightly larger town anyway.\u00a0 And because I am twenty minutes from nowhere, I arrived in about a half hour.<\/p>\n
I dutifully handed in my business card with the words \u201cfree oil change\u201d and a scribbled signature on the back that was as good as gold at this locale.\u00a0 And after signing here, here and initialing there I walked into the waiting room and memorized the free Wi-Fi password and sat down to see what was going on in the outside world.\u00a0 And then my whole world came crashing down.\u00a0 No Wi-Fi service.\u00a0 Oh, the pain, the pain.<\/p>\n
So, I started writing a screed on my laptop about fake elections and their consequences.\u00a0 I began to warm to the task at hand and I invoked Chicago\u2019s Richard Daley and Saddam Hussein\u2019s Iraq and I was just getting ready to start summoning the peasants with torches and pitchforks to begin the reckoning when another customer showed up in the waiting room.<\/p>\n
When he walked in, we both gave the polite head nod of acknowledgement.\u00a0 I began writing again but I could tell he was fidgeting about.\u00a0 He announced that he was going to order the $5 car wash to go along with his other service.\u00a0 I averred that it sounded like a good deal.\u00a0 And off he went.\u00a0 But when he returned, I could tell he had some conversation in him and after thinking for a second I thought why the hell not?\u00a0 Being locked away for the last nine months how many random conversations had I had in that time?\u00a0 Why the hell not?<\/p>\n
My auto mechanic\u2019s waiting room fellow inmate was an older fellow.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t have been younger than seventy-five and for all I know he could be ninety.\u00a0 I\u2019d guess he was a healthy eighty-year-old.\u00a0 Without much in the way of introductory remarks we began to discuss a wide range of topics, self-learning artificial intelligence, ivermectin as a treatment and prophylaxis for COVID, the security and surveillance state we live in and the appalling state of physical fitness among Americans.\u00a0 I found out that my friend lived in my town and in fact lived on the same street as my daughter\u2019s family.\u00a0 I learned that he is a medical doctor interested in starting a hydroponic farm to supplement the food he currently serves at a restaurant that he owns in the area.\u00a0 In addition to this I learned that like me he was born in New York City and was of Italian extraction.\u00a0 And finally, after a few guarded questions we discovered that we were both of the conservative political persuasion.<\/p>\n
Now we commiserated about the fate of conservatives living in New England and the general degradation of the American polity and we probably would still be there talking except that before we knew it my car was ready for me.\u00a0 We parted on friendly terms and I promised to check out his restaurant sometime soon.\u00a0 And all the way home I thought about the odds of a chance meeting on the first day out of captivity in weeks in ultra-blue southern New England being someone so obviously aligned with my world view.\u00a0 The odds are very remote.\u00a0 Or maybe they\u2019re not that remote.\u00a0 Maybe even in a place like this there are tons of good people left out there who are not crazy and who are working to make this world sane.<\/p>\n
Giving up on this country is a bad idea.\u00a0 Organizing the good people is the task at hand.\u00a0 There are millions of us.\u00a0 And even where we are not the majority, we are still a mighty force.\u00a0 And that\u2019s not just numbers.\u00a0 It\u2019s because we are the good and useful part of society and we can find a way to live the kind of life we want to live.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got to start getting out there again.\u00a0 There really is a lot to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So today I went on an odyssey of rediscovery.\u00a0 I ventured out of the compound to get the oil changed on the older car.\u00a0 I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,818],"tags":[1341,1575,2833,1513],"class_list":["post-13091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-ocf","tag-building-new-institutions","tag-fighting-the-good-fight","tag-look-for-the-good","tag-rebuilding-from-the-ground-up"],"yoast_head":"\n